A recent British Columbia Supreme Court decision (Mackenzie v. Harken Towing Co. Ltd., 2025 BCSC 2493) addresses a long-standing and increasingly common issue in waterfront property law: whether man-made changes to shoreline land can extinguish riparian rights. In a dispute involving members of the same family and a decades-old marine business, the Court confirmed that riparian rights endure despite significant human alteration of the foreshore.
At the centre of the case was a residential property at in Coquitlam, owned by Shane and Jennifer Mackenzie, the plaintiffs. Their relatives, through Harken Towing Co. Ltd., had operated a marine business on adjacent foreshore and water lots since the 1950s. The conflict escalated in 2022 when Harken Towing erected a barricade and posted no-trespassing signs, effectively blocking the plaintiffs’ access to the Pitt River.
